The freight industry utilizes many primary containers for shipments of products around the world—corrugated boxes, padded paper envelopes, poly bags, pallets, and wood, plastic, or metal crates. Each type of container has its own inherent advantages and disadvantages. One common disadvantage is shipping costs. Shipping costs may be affected by several factors including, but not limited to: the distance that the container is being shipped, the weight of the container (including the product), and the volume of the container. Freight haulers generally provide fixed volumes for shipments in their network or system: containers for use on ships, truck trailers, airplane cargo cubes, etc. The volume of something, such as a container, a storage area, or a shipping area, is sometimes referred to as the “cube”, which is an abbreviation for “cubic feet.” In the shipping industry, a container may be referred to as a container or as a cube. To avoid confusion of terms, and for convenience of discussion herein, a product will be shipped in a package or container, and a package or container will be shipped in a cargo cube.
Often, a shipper pays for an allocated cargo cube, regardless of whether that cargo cube is completely filled with containers or has void spaces. Such a void space is referred to as “shipping air,” or “air ship,” which is undesirable as it represents unused, but paid for, shipping space. Thus, the cube of any void spaces in a cargo cube represents a significant cost variable. Further, movement of products or containers within a cargo cube can lead to damage to the products, which results in product returns and added costs. To avoid such movement and possible damage, the void spaces are often filled with “dunnage”—a material which fills the voids to provide protection and to reduce movement of the containers within the shipping volume.
Filling the cargo cube with containers minimizes void space and dunnage. Further, a container, although often useful to protect the product, represents a volume that is not being used for the actual product. Shippers are therefore motivated to seek to provide the best fit package for each product so as to minimize void space and the additional volume of the container itself. Ideally, a shipper would have an unlimited portfolio of containers, each container being precisely matched to a particular product so that the cube of the container is as close as possible to the cube of the product itself. Practically, however, the portfolio is limited by many factors, including the price and availability of storage space for multiple sizes of containers, cost and availability of the materials for the containers, and the protective merits of the containers. As a result, shippers are faced with a limited portfolio of shipping container sizes and shapes to ship products. This limited shipping container portfolio often results in higher or excessive “air ship,” dunnage requirements, labor (to handle dunnage), disposal cost of the dunnage, and the cube of one container being too small or of the wrong shape for the product, and the next larger size or usable shape container resulting in void space in the container and an excessive container cube considering the cube of the actual product. Also, if the available container is oversized for the product, then the void space in the container will be filled with dunnage to prevent movement of, and damage to, the product within the container. One method of filling the void space in a container is using expanding foam dunnage: the product is placed in the shipping container, and then expanding foam is placed in the container to fill the voids in the container and prevent movement of the product within the container.